I picked up a package from Erin Forbes last Saturday. It is from Rossman Apiaries and looked really good. Very few dead bees in the bottom. I brought them home and installed them in a medium box. Strangely the cork in the end opposite the candy was crooked and had no candy plug so I wound up taking the cork out of the other end and making a small hole in the candy on that end.
I opened the hive up on Monday to see if the queen was out yet, but she was not so I put her back. Otherwise everything looked normal.
Yesterday (Thursday) I opened the hive up and found the queen cage empty. I looked through several frames before I found some eggs. Yay! The bees were drawing comb and putting in nectar.
They also had started a queen cup 1/3 of the way from the top of the frame--not a swarm cell, apparently a supersedure cell. I guess they are not happy with their new queen? I'm going to leave them alone for now. The weather has been too rainy and cool to do much besides feed them
Yesterday I picked up a package from Brown's Bee Farm. Also Georgia bees, but not from Rossman. I should copy over the information from the box. There were some dead bees on the bottom of the package, but not a huge amount. A good cluster formed around the queen cage.
Again the cork opposite the candy was crooked and had no candy plug. The queen also seemed to have a lot of attendants. I don't know if that means anything or not. I did the same thing with this queen cage and pulled the cork on the end with the candy and dug out some of the candy so the bees should have an easier time freeing her. It's supposed to rain all weekend so I won't be able to look in on them until Monday.
Both hives have buckets of 1:1 syrup with a feeding supplement. One medium box with screened bottom and telescoping top.
I have been trying out the uniform that I noticed the master beekeepers wore at the Open Hive at the beginning of May--a veil, but no gloves. It is actually easier not to squish a bee if you can feel it before closing your fingers on it. The only thing is they had their veils attached to jackets/shirts so no bees in the armpits:) That's the thought that freaks me out when I'm working with the veil. I can keep the bees out of my face and hair, but I'm usually wearing a t-shirt if it's warm and getting stung in the armpit seems like such an awful thought. Maybe it has to happen so I can get over it. No stings so far this year so I'm doing better than last year.
